Posted 2 years ago on Sept. 29, 2012, 11:10 a.m. EST by richardkentgates
(3269)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

I am currently living with family after the last 5 hellish years in this economy and losing a $13 an hour job as an ATM technician. I'm now back to cooking at $10 an hour which is average in my area, $13 being the limit and $11 being the likely top pay. Overtime is never given in restaurants, they instead will hire additional part time employees to prevent this, as per design of overtime laws so 35 hours is the average work week. Lets do the paycheck math.

10*35=350

I get paid every two weeks so we'll call a paycheck 700. Let do those deductions.

-$35 for Social Security

-$15 for medicare

=$650 every two weeks.

=$1,300 per month

This is of course assuming the payroll tax holiday Obama passed doesn't expire because then I would also have to pay actual payroll taxes.

So my average income is 1,300 per month. Lets do the bills. (Budget is based on myself and my two kids that I have about 3 days a week)

$650 per month for an apartment one step above ghetto.

$150 average electric bill for an all electric apartment.

$65 average water bill.

$180 average in gas for my 1.5 liter car.

$35 for car insurance.

$49 per month for communications.

$300 for groceries.

=$1,429

and I'm spent. If my car breaks, if we need clothing, If I have to buy new shoes for work, if my kids get sick and need medicine. Ect...

What does it all mean?

I don't collect food stamp or any government assistance. I do not get assistance from charity or any other organizations. I pay my way, as it should be. I don't want your safety net, I'm glad it's there but I don't want it.

I want to work and make a living. I bust my ass day in and day out, I am supposed to produce each ticket (ordered food) in less than 7 minutes, regardless of the number of tickets (haha, food safety). I hurt so bad at the end of the day that I spend my afternoons hunched over and unable to engage in any other physical activities. I spend my free time pursuing self employment through my drive and creativity into the web development field.

I don't collect from the system and I work my ass off so you understand when people talk trash about how I'm poor because I suck off the government tit and I'm not applying myself, you'll excuse my anger, you'll understand why to say something like what Romney said and then to stand within arms reach of myself is not in his interest. Yeah, I hate the rich, I loath the wealthy. What, you think I should hide the fact, pretend that I see them equally as human beings? Well I don't. I see the wealthy as taking advantage, living in multi-million dollar homes and driving luxury cars, living it up, off of my labor while my kids go without. I see them as soulless subhuman pieces of shit. Is it any wonder?

[Don't give me your pity party that restaurant owners don't make that much, I live in one of the biggest tourist spots in the world, I know exactly how profitable my labor is.]

273 Comments

It all means that you live in a country that does not value the worker or the human being, for that matter. You live in a country run by corporations and the wealthy for their benefit only. You live within an economic system that exploits worker productivity to the maximum, that puts profits over people. It's really sickening. You are not alone. There are millions of Americans in your position.

I just saw a commercial by WalMart. They're so nice. They talked about how 1 in 6 Americans has trouble putting food on the table and about how we can all help this by shopping at WalMart. It's the perfect example of how f'd up this country is. Six members of the Walton family own as much wealth as the bottom 30% of Americans. Why the fk don't they share their profits? Why the fk doesn't the government make them share their profits? How the hell did we get to this point? What can we do to get out of it?

Exactly. That is why the commercial infuriated me so much. Many of their workers work full time and still qualify for food stamps. The nerve of them. The Walton family are the entitled ones. Pay up, I say.

You live in a country where those of a welfare mentality derive 29,000 a year plus free medical benefits and free education from government, which then taxes you at 35% plus to finance it.

At one point I was renting a two bedroom ranch with a wife and two kids... the woman next door was on welfare, with three kids, and living in a two story four bedroom house. Her live in black boyfriend was also on welfare and "working" as a drug dealer. And there was a boat in their garage bigger than my house.

Who's the fool here? But it didn't matter, I left the house every morning before 7, 7 days a week, for months on end... and in passing, I would give them the finger. Truth.

People like you are the reason why workers are so exploited in this country. You just can't freaking see what is really going on here. This isn't about your neighbors or the color of their skin. This about you having to work 7 days a week. Don't you get it? You and people who think like you are the reason why the labor movement sucks in this country. You have bought into the argument that it is shameful to ask for anything so you just keep accepting things the way they are, and they suck.

Hmm... far be it for me... but... well... you know... actually.... I think... maybe... I mean... Well, who's to really say, you know? I mean, really; but anyway...

I do get it. Not only do I get it, I am intimately familiar with it.

We've lived like this way for a thousand years and apparently it worked or I wouldn't be here. And I'd rather fight than switch; it's that simple. So you can keep your Obama bucks... and you can keep your anti-capitalism and your "collectivism." Because this is live free or die, babeee... and that's exactly what I mean.

Try looking up instead of down. That tenth of one percent make 12% of all income. Averaging $12 million a year. 120 times the average wage. Do you know what the average wage is for all workers? A little over a $100,000 a year including benefits. Even people with masters degrees barely make an average income.

People need to group together and use methods like collective bargaining to obtain better wages. Instead of negotiating on you own against a huge corporation, unite with hundreds and thousands of others and let an expert bargain on your behalf.

Everything is negotiable. The owner of the company's pay is not set in stone, and neither is yours!

Are you suggesting that my use of the word "black" is racist? Do you think those old "Black Power" Panthers would agree with you?

I'm quite certain you perceive of things in the same light I do - we live in very similar worlds, we share the same visions - whether you like black drug dealers or not, whether racist or not - we still share this vision; our perception is the same. And if I'm telling a story, even if non-fictional, it's important to be descriptive; don't you agree?

You are a fucking racist classist pig. This has been illuminated by your decision to perpetuate racial stereotypes in the thread. No, I DON'T SEE WHAT YOU SEE. I don't see color, because I am not RACIST, like you.

Those numbers are based on "self reporting" survey takers. Question I have-what are the percentages from both sides that did not take the survey at all? What percentages from both sides lied and were honest?

"there is little direct research on the race of drug sellers" (from the article)

White users outnumber black users 'cause there's more white people but the dealers are at least 90% black. You can get high on whatever happy horseshit you want; I'm cool with that, as long as you're happy. And I'm cool with underground economies. But I'm getting tired of the Left generating all these bullshit lies and then insisting that people believe them, or die, in direct violation of everything observable in the real world.

No, I just don't get all of my facts from the MSM. Drug dealers include college students that sell Adderall in the dorms, people in the Phish parking lot selling acid, the guy selling meth in the trailer park, the high school kid selling weed, the guy selling coke in the Hamptons.

If you really think that 90% of dealers are black, then you're probably like 80 years old and get your info from cheezy 80s reruns and Fox news.

not sure why you are here but you are in the wrong place. first of all you are not very bright - the last time i bought dope from a black guy was 1971 - they are all white up here y'all. as to living this way for 1000 yrs - what way is that. you are like the dumb ass poor white trash that fought in 1863 and gave his life to keep slavery- don't get much dumber than that. couldn't see that he had more in common with the slave than with the massa. no wonder the south sucks all the money from the frederal government and then votes republican. is it the inbreeding do you think?

search around, there are blacks on record saying that voted for obama because he's black. no ideology involved , just rascism. " if it was a black republican against a white dem, i believe african americans would vote for the dem". YOU dont speak for blacks.
unless you were born in africa ( a continent not a country) and came to america and then became a US citizen, you're are not an" african american" . do you consider teresa heinz kerry ( born in mozambique , to be an " african american"?any form of hyphenated american is a divisive thing. black ( negroid) is a race , not a nationality.

Black is NOT a race. It is a skin color. We are all one race, the human race.

I was not speaking for blacks. I said "I believe"! So I was giving my opinion based on my close relationship with many African Americans, who are smart enough to vote for thecandidate most likely to address their concerns.

That would never be republicans (whatever color). For instance Herman Cain would never get a large percent of African American votes.
Cause his repub agenda is anti black people.

Just as there are lots of whites that voted against Obama simply because he is black, I am sure there are lots of blacks who voted for him simply because he is black, even if they have no idea about the issues. Racism works both ways.

Racism has held down black & brown skin people for centuries. To such an extent that those groups still struggle with oppression, destitution & misery!

So I assure you racism doesn't "work both ways" in THAT regard!

In regards to voting for Pres Obama, You and I disagree that "lots of blacks" voted for him simply because he is black.

Very few did so in my opinion. They are smart enough to know that if a Herman Cain got the repub nomination his repub agenda is toxic to all minorities! Cain might get 10% of black votes.

I would also submit that many white racists voted against Obama with his skin color at the forefront of their minds but the truth is those white racists would not support a white dem presidential candidate because of the dem agenda regarding racial issues, (affirm action, immigration, etc)

explain how herman cains " agenda" is anti black. "black" which is negroid , caucasion and mongoloid are the three main categories of the human race, based on distinct things,......skin color, epicanthal fold, hair texture, eye color.

there is NO recovery, all dems are interested in is controlling your life, telling what you have to do. what you must do . what you will do. there isnt much of a difference between liberalism and sharia law.

How does fighting for the right of any couple to get married and enjoy the same rights protections as any other couple ( Dem support of gay marriage - Rep opposition ) who enter into marriage a comparison to sharia law(?) - it would seem that the republicans would be more in support of sharia law then the democrats in this example.

That's funny coming from the party that want's to force women to get vaginal probes, allow bosses to question them about there sex lives and claims what 2 same sex adults do in their bedroom is a sin.

You're party has been taken ovder by the American Taliban (tea party) That's as close to Sharia law as I want to see.

And a recovery is measured by qtrly gdp growth. We've had that since the dems stimulus was passed. If it wasn't watered down by tepubs, & if your unpatriotic repubs had not obstructed every effort at job creation, & if your repubs hadn't fired almost 1 million public sector workers the recovery would have been a lot stronger!.

You are in denial. The repubs arethe religious wackos who want to control us. The dems ARE fiscally responsible while repubs ALWAYS explode the deficit!

you know nothing of sharia law, in fact you dont know much about anything. you are incapable of critical thinking. part of the dem /progressive platform is the dissolution of god.thats about the only thing they differ from sharia on. 16 trillion in debt and still counting,........the the dems, who refuse to have a budget, everyone submited by obama was voted down ( 100%) by his own party .
on a routine visit to the doctor, under obamacare i ws questioned about my sex life, what type of birth control? how often , with who? male , female or both? the questions were not the doctors , she ws just complying with obamacare. all repsonses go direct to the govt off of a laptop . no more doctor paitent privacy.

Dr's should ask health questions. Sex life should be confidential as should your conversation with your dr. You should be able to talk with & trust your Dr.. Pres Obama hasn't required dr's ask about you sex life. Obamacare is not implemented yet so your conversation has nothing to do with Pres Obama.

Blame Obama!!!! He did it!!! LMFAO.

the $16T national debt is mainly repub created! Our current annual deficit is mostly Bushes leftovers.

Dems do want to leave religion/God out of platform which is better of course. In America we believe in the seperation of church and state. The Talibam believe in religious givt (and your tea party).

I'm an athiest and think religion/god just creates another line for people to draw and war over. Enough already. Let's evolve into the 21st century and put these bronze age fairy tales behind us.

you mean like obama,..................admit his defeat in foreign policy, national security, 42 + months of unemployment over 8%, doubling of the gasoline prices? if he wont admit to them , then he's the problem. go home kegger, you're owner is calling.

Your repubs crashed the world economy. They have obstructed all attempts at a strong recovery. Repubs have fired almost 1 million state public sector workers during an unemployment crises.

Your repubs have behaved treasonously. In the face of that unpatriotic criminal action we have brought unemployment down from almost 11% and started adding jobs (more than 5 million) while your repubs were losing almost 800 per month)

We now have GDP growth every qtr, while your repubs gave us a -9% qtr!

We have ended the repubs illigal oil war, and reduced US military killings from 1 million+ to thousands.

You got nothing! Give it up!. once we get rid of the extreme right wing wacko tea party 1% tools we will improve the lives of the 99%.

obama had 2 years with a dem controlled congress and senate. and yet we havew had 42+ months of 8% and higher unemployment.
do a search, see what the debt was when bush left office and look at what its at now ,.........with obama in charge for the last 3 3/4 yrs.

Bush was left a surplus by a dem admin. Bush turned the surplus into a $1.2 Trillion annual deficit. We still have that because the repubs in congress have obstructed all efforts by Pres Obama to cut that deficit!

Unemployment reached almost 11% because of Bushes great recession and Pres Obamas policies have brought it down to 8%.

It would be lower if the repubs in congress had not obstructed every jobs bill the Pres proposed, & if the repub did not fire almost 1 million state workers.

The Pres is doing his part the repubs are working against the country!

Pres Obama ended Bushes illegal oil war, He has withdrawn all surge troops in Afghan, begun thedraw down of all troops and signed an agreement to end our military action there.

Pres Obama has reduced US military killings from 1 million+ to thousands.

He has resisted the pressure to invade Iran by war mongering right wing here and in Isreal! He has not utilized the fear mongering tactics of the right wing neocons. He has cut merc use, the military budget, & nuclear weapons with plans for more cuts.

And he has set the conditions to finally declare the war on terror over!

. here is two out of the three you asked for.......... Dr Rudd ( GP) 732 286 4710 Dr. Drudy ( opthomologist) 609 597 8087
under bush the gdp was up 4 - 6 % each quarter.
little barry hs doubled the total debt and has added over a trillion dollars each year to the debt.
again , re read the 1st amendment. re it slowly , maybe you'll understand it.

The Bush recession gave us several negative growth (contraction) qtrly GDP, the worst was -9% contraction. Pres Obama has given us growth every qtr slow only because of repub obstruction!

The annual $1T deficit is the same one left over by Bush after he put 2 wars on credit and give the wealthy 1% huge tax cuts they don't need. And the national debt has not doubled that's just you lying.

the doctor told me that the " sex questions" she asked were a requirement of obamacare. you wrong about obamacare not yet being implemented, it is. another qustion that ws asked " do you own a gun?" my friends have told me that the same questions were asked of them. we do not have the same doctors. at the opthomologist, after reading the eye chart, my eyes were dilated to check for cataracts. before obamacare, no charge for the dilation, after obamacare, i was charged. the eye doctor said this was due to obamacare. in fact the opthomologists office was closed for 4 days to be geared up for obamacare. i was told this when i made my appointment.
regarding the debt. the obama administraion has added more to it in 3 3/4 years than all the preceeding adminstrations , put together.
reread the 1st amendment. it does not say ' separation of church and state".
you believe what you choose to, i believe what i choose to regarding god. the problems come when one forces their beliefs on another.

How did you know she was on welfare? How did you know he was a drug dealer? What did he deal? Was it a good product? Did he deal out of his own home? Was there any drug related violence at his 4 bedroom house next door to your family.? Did you call the police?

You're really bored, right? OK, so... this was a small town; in a small town people notice things. Short of actually looking in their bedroom windows to observe, we know what our neighbors are doing. It's an interesting phenomena of small town New England that people study their neighbors, and often times rather intensely, and I suspect this goes all the way back to the days of village dweller.

What did he deal? Was it a good product? Did he deal out of his own home? Was there any drug related violence at his 4 bedroom house next door to your family.? Did you (or the organized neighbors) call the police?

I have never been big on either drugs or alcohol. Related violence? I can't comment on "related," and I think violence is a rather relative term, but the cops were there occasionally for domestic stuff.

I forget how I discovered that; I don't really remember. No, no one called the police. It's hard to explain to foreigners but in small town America people mind their own business. And we don't put a lot of faith in authorities. We tend to be more live and let live and the reason for that is that we know the harsh realities of life all too well. It's hard to explain but it's not like most would envision it.

Some people make a living hustling in small towns. You're taking this much too personally. You'd be amazed by how much people mind their own business in urban areas. It's not what you think. You're forgetting that people from rural areas can come to the city and be quite the hustlers too.

Ahh so you were respecting his privacy. Or you invaded it enough to build a neighborly rumour campaign case against him. but you don't remember the evidence of drug dealing? that is unbelievable. Literally unbelievable.!

And you didn't call the cops? because the drug dealers privacy and freedom to sell drugs was more important than the safety of you families family?

LMFAO!!!!

More likely you have no evidence and you're just makin it all up.

I think small town America is more likely to call the cops on a black guy (shacked up with a white girl) whether they had evidence or not, whether he did anything illegal or not.

I'm not the one who is spewing hatred about my neighbor because of their color, or interracial status. I haven't called them drug dealers and leeches without evidence. I haven't "coveted my neighbors property (boat)" (jealous much). You did all that!

And then you expect me to believe you (or one of the many neighbors) wouldn't call the police to stop what you're describing as a clearly criminal, probably dangerous situation?

Haha.. he was a drug dealer. And he's probably dead by now. Who knows... the GF is probably married to some Senator now, right? And the children are Ivy League, right? Hah... and that's my point.

You know you liberal wackjobs have gotten so pusillanimous you are literally telling the black thieves - I say again, BLACK - in NY to please, please, take my cell... I don't need it, you need it; and I won't even have you prosecuted; I promise. Please, take it... It happens every day in NY; it's disgusting. You call yourself white? Do you call yourself anything? Except scared? How is it that you're not safe in your own neighborhood? How did that happen?

I would never call the police unless it involved a personal emergency, or unless there was a need to document.

This is incredibly off topic. I don't see one comment about JP Morgan getting a 14 billion dollar annual subsidy or anything about the unlimited resources given to banks.

You're attacking welfare, public schools, and medicare.

Yes some people abuse the system. Sad but true. This is not a majority.

Also welfare does not pay enough to buy a huge house and a boat. So that guy had to be selling a lot of drugs to fund all of that. You can thank the war on drugs for providing that guy with a black market to profit from.

Also your need to point out the man was black makes me think you might be a little racist.

I'm all for redistribution. I don't want your money, I want the banks to give back what they have extorted, from you, from me, from everyone that works for a living. If you like being extorted from by the banks with the justice department as their strong arm, fine, I'd be glad to receive your share as well.

None of us know to what extent there is need to prop up this false economy. Or to what extent the banks require funds.

I don't favor any of this but I am also dead set against any form of redistribution - it's theft, plain and simple - and stealing from the rich is no better than stealing from the poor; to be free, you have to make it on your own - generational dependency is not a good thing.

Did you know that banks charge non-account holders to honer checks from their customers. A payroll check that says Bank of America at the top will cost you $5 to cash it at Bank of America. Nobody bitches about this because the only people being penalized are the workers who don't have a bank account. Thats right, you get charged to collect on your own goddamn paycheck. I'm done with your pity party for the fucking banks.

So some people play dirty against a dirty system, I applaud their silent rebellion. Obviously they have accepted the reality of the situation and are doing what animals do, survive. My pride and beliefs are the only thing that keeps me from going down the same road. Blame yourself.

You know the white woman next door (we were of similar age) was divorced with three children; the black live-in long-time boyfriend, or "common law" husband, was an ex-convict; together they scammed the welfare system, engaged in drug deals that no doubt brought strife to many local working class families, black and white.

You know, prior to the early 1970s couples rarely divorced. And african americans actually worked.

This is what redistribution has brought us, what the welfare state and generational dependency has brought us, and it wasn't the redistribution of the rich, it was the redistribution of the working class and middle class that form our majority tax base.

I paid taxes then, including federal tax, and I pay enough in taxes now to fiance at least two families of your size in more relative comfort that you presently enjoy.

Blame myself?

By the way, I think your story is all BS. Mine on the other hand, is very real. It is the reality of working class and middle class americans - we don't blame the rich, we blame government.

Your plight sounds similar to several people I know. I give you credit. My foster Son just gave up and is lving on Foodstamps and Federal assistance.
You want to ger really angry, read my post entitled The Real "Takers". Plug the name of the last public company you worked for into SECFORM4.com and take a look at the $$$ that is given to The One Percent. And I mean "GIVEN". Not "invested". Seriously. It's given to them just for being part of "the club".

'UUK' : You define 'Hoover Up Crapitalism' in a nutshell as we see how a Parasitic 0.01% 'Extract Rentier Returns' from the labour of The 99% ! The 1%'s sense of 'entitlement' is stupendous !! But Spaniards showed a way today ... 'cause Resistance Is Fertile !!!

Those who control the institutions that control the perceptions of the people, in effect control the people. Which means we're screwed! Because rather than actually think for themselves, most people just parrot what their spoon fed by "those institutions". I realized that during the discourse in some of my responses. I kept saying to myself, "wait a minute, where have I heard this before?"

Is the reason 90% of us must go in debt to live, that 10% have on average ten times or more the average net worth, leaving only zero and negative real numbers for us? Is life a zero sum game after all?

My wife and I, living collectively off my $15/hr job, like to muse from time to time that if we were to ever get to the point where we had a million dollars, we'd make a point to still live in a small home (we might upgrade from 1 to 2 bedrooms, and own instead of rent), drive economy cars, and otherwise live about the same lifestyle we do now, and stash the remainder of the money. I wonder how possible that is, though. I haven't read anything about it, to be honest, but I can't help but wonder how much pressure/logistics there is behind gaining wealth and having to "show" it (have a large house, fancy car, etc.). Have there ever been any wealthy individuals who strictly maintained a working-class lifestyle?

Of course, the rags-to-riches idea betrays one of the biggest hypocrisies of a current-day free-market ideology. A vast number of Americans boiled their bootstraps for dinner years ago, and not because they're delicious.

Conservatives would have us fending for ourselves in one of, if not THE, most inopportune times in American history. It's a nice system we now have in the U.S., where the people, abandoned by big business, are basically forced into dependency on (a hopefully benevolent) government, who, in turn, seem to be dependent on big business for greasing its wheels.

It's a perfect power play. There are just enough shitty jobs to keep just enough people marginally employed (enslaved) so that fear of losing any ground keeps us from being able to devote time to doing the one thing that might help us in this cause: take to the streets.

I should state that I'm not entirely against capitalism as a whole. I can kinda see the value of the "free market" as we've known it. I can kinda see the value in promoting states' rights. However, I also happen to believe in "yin" and "yang", and believe that, as supply-siders had their reign and, in haste, drastically spoiled the soup, now is the time to swing the opposite direction (New Deal 2) and recalibrate. I'm more a proponent of moderation in the grand-scheme, but that won't solve anything today.

There's value in ideas on both sides of the debate, but right now I think we need a strong singular force (lean mean government) to boldly combat the scattershot economic guerilla warfare from the past 30+ years.

Right. But as we've been uber-captalist since Reagan, now is the time for uber-socialism. But that idea doesn't fly for a great number of Americans, on principle alone. I think that, aside from deflating the negative connotation of the word "socialism", the argument for a resurgence of New Deal legislation might be better sold if it's done in a manner of socialism as a semi-temporary healing measure, and not a permanent legislative direction. If Obama, who kinda seems to be at least speaking socialistically, would say: "This is what we do NOW, and after we right ourselves, we head back towards the middle (a "new SMART middle").", he might receive a little more acceptance from conservative Americans.

Why are you paying $150 for electricity every month and $180 for gasoline? I think you'll find the gubment is subsidizing and regulating the crap out of those industries. That isn't working so swell, huh?

Ever wonder why everything politicians touch turns to schit?

"The more the plans fail, the more the planners plan." - Ronald Reagan

My fiance and I were wondering this morning what it would be like to just be able to go out and buy something, or have dinner somewhere. We never do, we live on the edge too like you. We do everything the way we should. Work full time, pay our bills, don't buy anything above absolutely necessary things. But what is it like to go tho the store and purchase something (even groceries) and not wonder if you're really going to pay / be punished for it now by putting yourself behind on everything. How can two full time working people not be cutting it and have nothing left for retirement? This is the economy that we are supposed to accept? 50 percent of Americans make less than $26000 per year. I do want to see people successful but not if they are hurting the country and our way of life to get there; there is success and then there is just extravagance that's been built of betting on the stock market, companies exploiting workers here and in China, and land-lord trust corps out-bidding then bilking the public on rent and housing. America didn't make it this far with this mentality. The economy must function in a circle - employees are the consumers. There must be jobs - You can have it no other way. Right now subsidies to the broke and starving are creating a whole new subsidy for Wall Street. Once again they are exploiting the working class to expunge every last dime from us while they live by rules different than the citizenry. If you want to have a mega store that uses heat, oil, air conditioning - water for all that landscaping (a write off by the way; have you noticed how ridiculous bank landscaping has become?) and drive up costs for the rest of us by creating scarcity in the market then you should at least pay taxes with no loopholes. The job creators are the working class who buy products and build companies with their labor. Congress has got things backwards. Get rid of monopolies, stop giving all our money to them and allowing them to consume all our resources and bribe Congress into creating red-tape for small entrepreneurs; tax those who headquarter and manufacture overseas, demand education housing, and healthcare be cheaper, and use our taxes for what they were intended - the citizenry not some megalopoly headquartered in Zaipan or even one on Wall Street. A global economy is too large to manage. How can you create a global economy when we don't even have functioning local economies? Creating a global economy benefits only the one percent. Get rid of all the monopolies the working class is full of entrepreneurs who can employ each other if they weren't crushed out of existence. Small business can only function in the absence of monopolies.

Have you considered joining or forming a union? Just an extra dollar an hour for a full time worker is over $2,000 a year. A huge difference to an employee, a dent in quarterly profit for the corporation.

Union organizing needs to be a core principle for Occupy. We can't wait for a corporate dominated Congress to raise taxes on the wealthy.

Your situation is an example of what a lot of people in this country are experiencing and have been experiencing for the last few years.

This Administration has done nothing for the working class - it's all about bailing out wall street - Now with the QE3 underway more money is being used to buy secured mortgages from the banks so they have more money available to them - - not for your use though.

Why didn't this administration take that money and put it into small business and the working class?

He won't because he has driven a wedge between the business class and the working class.

Businesses are sitting on their profits because of the unceratainty he has created in the economy. I have talked with quite a few business owners of the past several days and they all say the same thing - they aren't going to do anything until this Administration and president is out of office.

So you can be sure if he gets re-elected you won't have a good paying job nor will the economy imporve. You can be sure of that.

I only wish there was a good job for you to go to but that's what the present situtation is with Obama in office.

You need to take techjunkie's advice, take that $80,000 you likely saved while struggling the last 5 years getting paid $13 an hour, go to school for engineering, since anyone can become an engineer, and enroll in that program that every company has that allows you to put off paying your bills for 4 years while you attend school.

Also, ignore the critics who say the low unemployment rate in some fields, like tech, are misleading and are a result of former tech workers getting jobs in another field at less pay.

He's actually doing a really good job of teaching himself the fundamentals of web development. It doesn't take $80,000. I work with a lot of people who have no formal training beyond high school. I hired a guy out of a Miami Dade Community College class in 2009 who I can't even afford any more. He makes $85/hr now from Pivotal Labs. Except for one introduction to programming class, he's 100% self-trained and he went from unemployed to $85/hr in two and a half years.

Yes, exactly. Which is why my typical weed-out process when I'm considering hiring new talent doesn't even involve an interview. I provide potential hires with training materials for interesting technologies that they haven't used. If they're cut out for the job then they'll gobble it up and build something just to play with the new technology.

I currently have about 4 dollars in change right next to me on my desk. If I had 80,000 dollars, I wouldn't have any right to complain.

As for your school advice, I already went to trade school for computer hardware and IT. Which has lead to a business license in my county under service provider and http://richardkentgates.com but I don't expect to gain any traction until the economy recovers. Until then, I'll be stuck with this budget.

For certain parts of development this is true. The boom does not include new websites for the service industry, that I'm quite certain of.

I don't want to do this just to work for someone else. I want to be self employed, I want to work within my community. I understand people will reign down fire and brimstone on me for these limitations but these are my goals, and I am confident I will see them through.

Actually you know what my current venture is, and it involves exactly that. New web sites for the service industry. But I wouldn't be doing so well if I tried to do sales and development at the same time.

We provide information services for the service industry, and the web site is a part of CRM because that's where the customer information tends to come from. We provide custom web sites for our clients because that locks them into our services.

You posted this page all about your problems, and two different guys who have been successful professionally in the industry that you aspire to join have been trying to help you to understand how you could be more successful. We're not trying to convince you to forgo self-employment, we're trying to help by pointing out that maybe this isn't the right time in your web career to start your own shop. Yet.
One thing that I've noticed about you is that you're consistently hostile to people who genuinely try to help you. Hopefully you and I are past that. But you might want to give it some thought. You seem to be holding yourself back in many ways.

You have spent all of these comments trying to prove that I am at fault for my lack of success. It's been interesting to watch it transpire, I admit. The contradictions in your position are quire astounding.

You fault me for my lack of success because I don't agree with your every word while also trying to tell me I'm not capable of working for myself, or that it's a bad idea. You expect me to be this motivated person and then try to talk me out of my motivation lol. What a crock of shit.

You aren't offering advice, you're trying to discredit one of the few legit complaint on this forum because you think Occupy is a bunch of whiny losers. Take your pompous attitude to the fuck'n trash where it belongs homeboy.

He was offering honest advice and so was I. No one is trying to prove that you are at fault for your lack of success. We only offered advice. Chill out, you're starting to sound like a drunk conspiracy theorist.

I'd rather be a drunk conspiracy theorist than a self important jackass. You imply that others can't do what you do because you're somehow special and/or better than others, that somehow being an elite code monkey makes you better qualified to run a biz. You asked about my goals and I told you. Then you spent several comments trying to shoot me down, fuck you and the horse you rode in on, omnipresent prick.

I wasn't implying that you were [omnipotent]; just tweaking a little for added effect. Whenever I find myself as odd man out, I feel it my duty to do that. He heard me - he might be a positive spokesman for his business model (and I would hope so) but he's not God.

I never shot you down Richard. I just gave my opinion. If you're able to make a good living with the model you described, then all the power to you. And, I never said being "an elite code monkey" makes me better at running a biz. Actually, I said that running a biz and being a coder are two fundamentally very different things and that's why I focus on coding only.

This is what I meant about how you tend to be hostile to the people who are trying to help you. I'll send you a link by private message since I would prefer to keep the companies involved private. Which I'll remind you is something that I already asked you once before and you immediately posted our URL here in public in response. Thanks for that, BTW.

You're asking why you're having trouble being successful, unless Jack and I are misunderstanding you. We're trying to help, and you're treating us like your enemies. I've already given you access to hundreds of dollars worth of valuable training materials that are the Rosetta Stone for learning all of the bleeding-edge technologies that you'll need to stay current if you plan to be a professional web developer. But you're still just openly hostile. I would like to respectfully suggest that maybe you should remember that one of the hats that you're determined to wear is CEO, and that means that you're going to need to get a lot better at business networking than this paranoia and name-calling that you're demonstrating here with two people from your industry (and your state, and your very niche) who are genuinely trying to help you.

There is a difference between trying to help and being a condescending prick. Just because you use nice words doesn't make it any more acceptable. I'm grown, I'm not going to listen to someone talk down to me just because they make more money.

I would like to respectfully suggest that maybe you should remember that one of the hats that you're determined to wear is CEO, and that means that you're going to need to get a lot better at business networking than this paranoia and name-calling that you're demonstrating here with two people from your industry (and your state, and your very niche) who are genuinely trying to help you.

I didn't ask for your help, your assumption that I need or want your help comes from your perception of hierarchical structure which is flawed. Just because I make less money than you does not mean I am soliciting your advice nor does it mean your advice is welcome. This thread isn't about you helping me or me needing help. It's about my current economic situation, what I am doing to improve it, and the very assumption that you make in offering your "advice".

I didn't need you to learn, I didn't need you to create what I have, I don't need you to see it through to success either. And, thats not what this thread is for.

We're not sharing wisdom with you because we make more money, we're sharing wisdom because we attained that wisdom the hard way and we're trying to share the benefit of our experience with you. You posted this page about all of the trouble that you're having, and both of us are trying to point out ways that you could be more successful. If you're trying to improve your current economic situation through web development then how does it make sense to be so hostile to two experienced professional software developers trying to offer you advice?

Right over your head. This thread unabashedly uses myself an an example of the struggles faced by the working class in America. I'm sorry you didn't get that on first read. This isn't a web design forum. The only reason I mentioned the web thing was to point out that most of us are trying like hell to better ourselves and situation. The theme is entirely socioeconomic. When I want advice on web design, I use web design forums, where I learned much of what I know about writing code.

Web design and code (which hopefully by now you realize are totally separate things) are only a small part of your economic woes, and Jack and I have been trying to provide some input on some of the larger strategic issues that you could address that would help you out a lot if you were to listen. I've done what you're trying to do. I learned a lot from it. I changed a lot of things and became far more successful. I'm trying to share some of that wisdom. Very little of it has to do with web design or code.

Well then can you explain why you prefer working in a kitchen and building your web business in your off time, rather than working in web development and getting paid at least two or three times more per hour, and still working on building your web business in your off time? That part really doesn't make any sense to me.

Why would I spend my time seeking hourly pay instead of seeking clients?

So that you don't have to work in a kitchen? So that you can work less hours, since you should be able to make two or three times more? Working contracts or working a job isn't mutually exclusive with building your business. It seems like your web business could benefit in many ways from your day job also being in web work instead of kitchen work.

I don't really understand why you see this as an argument. That's one of the problems that I'm trying to point out, that you treat potential business networking contacts like adversaries. I'm not trying to argue with you. I've walked the path that you're walking. If you go to a business networker and you talk to somebody in your industry with decades more experience and he offers you some advice and you start arguing with him, then he's just going to lose interest in helping you at all. Which is what you do here but I really hope that's not what you do in real life.

Why would you assume I seek networking on this forum or the web when I've made it abundantly clear that I seek business in my local community.

I see it as an argument because I'm trying to help you understand the nature of this thread, which has nothing to do with networking or seeking (unwanted) business advice.

Well then can you explain why you prefer working in a kitchen and building your web business in your off time, rather than working in web development and getting paid at least two or three times more per hour, and still working on building your web business in your off time? That part really doesn't make any sense to me.

But yet you're saying that you're struggling to sell new web sites to the service industry. Whereas I'm not. I have more backlogged work than I can handle without hiring more people. While you're trying to be the lead developer and the lead designer and the sales department and the CEO while you're also working a day job, you're competing with people who don't limit themselves that way. I've got multiple full-time sales people who cost nothing because they earn commissions. How can you beat that when you're trying to do everything yourself? Especially when you're competing in an industry where companies like us and OpenTable are willing to give away web sites to your potential clients for free just to lock them into services as part of a larger business model? I pointed out some potential strategic problems and you're free to ignore what I'm saying. Or you can keep struggling without making any adjustments. But that's not what successful CEOs do.

I spent a week trying to market my first CMS, realizing after a few demos to restaurant owners that the complexity was similar to wordpress and stopped. Since finishing my latest CMS, I have been actively looking for clients for, less than a day, I started calling this morning. I hardly call that a struggle.

Free websites are also part of my service, it's not a novel idea. I'm charging for web service management, not some blow and go HTML. You should stop making freelance dev sound like mission impossible, it sounds absurd to me and the thousands of other people doing it. And yes, I do mean we. Not having sold any websites doesn't mean I haven't done any work in the field.

Again, you make assumptions to back your other assumptions. Never do you inquire or listen. Your learning curve seems steeper and steeper.

I don't really understand why you see this as an argument. That's one of the problems that I'm trying to point out, that you treat potential business networking contacts like adversaries. I'm not trying to argue with you. I've walked the path that you're walking. If you go to a business networker and you talk to somebody in your industry with decades more experience and he offers you some advice and you start arguing with him, then he's just going to lose interest in helping you at all. Which is what you do here but I really hope that's not what you do in real life.

I see a lot of advice, very little wisdom. Wisdom come from humility, which I've seen very little from you. You are ready at every turn to tell others where and why they are wrong but you do very little listening.

I have stated many times what my model is and why it is. It comes from things in which you have zero experience.

I am targeting an industry in which I have worked for 20+ years. I have an intimate knowledge of the industry I am targeting. You target the same industry, an industry you have never worked in. Maybe that is why your learning curve seemed so hard and you project that on others. I know the needs of my potential clients, you had to learn it from the outside, the hard way.

My advice to you, is to stop being so self assured that you cannot see when other have knowledge and experience that you don't.

But yet you're saying that you're struggling to sell new web sites to the service industry. Whereas I'm not. I have more backlogged work than I can handle without hiring more people. While you're trying to be the lead developer and the lead designer and the sales department and the CEO while you're also working a day job, you're competing with people who don't limit themselves that way. I've got multiple full-time sales people who cost nothing because they earn commissions. How can you beat that when you're trying to do everything yourself? Especially when you're competing in an industry where companies like us and OpenTable are willing to give away web sites to your potential clients for free just to lock them into services as part of a larger business model?

I pointed out some potential strategic problems and you're free to ignore what I'm saying. Or you can keep struggling without making any adjustments. But that's not what successful CEOs do.

I totally agree. That's what I have experienced in the last years as well. There's also a big market that has opened up for programmers wanting to create ipad, iphone, or android apps. Also, more and more jobs and home working jobs. It's a great time to be programming!

Yes. And the guilt that I felt about making ever-increasing amounts of money while everybody else was hurting during the recession is part of why I came to this site a year ago and endured the insults for months until I convinced somebody from this site to let me personally train him, and then eventually hire him.

I was really hurting after the dot-com crash while everybody else was going nuts buying things that they couldn't afford so I don't feel too bad about it. But it was kind of almost shameful to be doing so well in 2009-2010 when everybody else was hurting.

When you're a 21 year old OWS protester dreaming of an anarcho-communist world even though it's mainly a theoretical system that has barely dipped it's toes in water you can dream of a life where money is of no importance. When you have a wife and kids getting skinnier every day because you don't have a dime then your mindset quickly changes. Some say Jesus lived off bread and water. I can't.

Yes about poverty and youth, and that relates to tech startups also. In the immortal words of Paul Graham:

If you start a startup soon after college, you'll be a young founder by present standards, so you should know what the relative advantages of young founders are. They're not what you might think. As a young founder your strengths are: stamina, poverty, rootlessness, colleagues, and ignorance.

The importance of stamina shouldn't be surprising. If you've heard anything about startups you've probably heard about the long hours. As far as I can tell these are universal. I can't think of any successful startups whose founders worked 9 to 5. And it's particularly necessary for younger founders to work long hours because they're probably not as efficient as they'll be later.

Your second advantage, poverty, might not sound like an advantage, but it is a huge one. Poverty implies you can live cheaply, and this is critically important for startups. Nearly every startup that fails, fails by running out of money. It's a little misleading to put it this way, because there's usually some other underlying cause. But regardless of the source of your problems, a low burn rate gives you more opportunity to recover from them. And since most startups make all kinds of mistakes at first, room to recover from mistakes is a valuable thing to have.

Most startups end up doing something different than they planned. The way the successful ones find something that works is by trying things that don't. So the worst thing you can do in a startup is to have a rigid, pre-ordained plan and then start spending a lot of money to implement it. Better to operate cheaply and give your ideas time to evolve.

Recent grads can live on practically nothing, and this gives you an edge over older founders, because the main cost in software startups is people. The guys with kids and mortgages are at a real disadvantage. This is one reason I'd bet on the 25 year old over the 32 year old. The 32 year old probably is a better programmer, but probably also has a much more expensive life. Whereas a 25 year old has some work experience (more on that later) but can live as cheaply as an undergrad.

That's why I advocate socialism which is simply a system where you are guaranteed a job at full pay as explained here.

Full pay means an economic system that pays workers 100% of the income, since they do 100% of the work, which pays no income to investors since they do no work, and which pays you based on how hard you work, not based on how lucky or unique you are.

In 2012, with a $15+ trillion economy, we have the resources to make everyone wealthy and the ability to give everyone the free time to enjoy their wealth. But that is only happening in socialism. It will never happen in capitalism.

If my daddy was wealthy enough to loan me the money, I would. The idea that working class people can open businesses on their own is what's bullshit and the failure rate in restaurants as you point out, grantees I will be unable to get a signature loan to open one. I am technically self employed jackass, I just don't have any clients yet. You really are a fucktard. Intentionally missing the point to justify being a dick, at that.

Most go bust because every rich clown wants to open one. Profit margins are usually between 3-7%. Its a lot of work. And it needs to have a unique positioning or selling point. But it takes an assload of money to open, and most that open are doing after other successful ventures.

I think most rich guys that open dont realize the amount of grunt work involved, and the amount of daily bullshit, which is why only 95% make it more than 5 years.

We had a table yesterday that was yelling in the dinning room about the menu prices. Owners don't eat rising costs and this is where you can see inflation at the consumer end. I think your position comes from the ma and pa end and they do work their asses off but that is becoming a rarity. I work for a privately owned corporate chain. We get to see the owners but the son drives a brand new land rover and wears $100 shirts, na mean. Most stores pull in over a million in profit every summer and some spend up to 10% of that to stay open in the winter, leaving them with just under a million in profit from each location annually. Average.

My business plan was dependent on 2000 homes being built 2 miles north of my store. They were already planned at the county. Construction workers would have been my customers. I opened in March, 2008. Great timing, lol.

None of the homes were ever built.

I have never seen as many people with almost no money. Bartering is growing in this area. Competitors are paying "under the table" to avoid payroll costs. This might explain why we got the crumbs of lower payroll taxes, to minimize this aspect.

The study was conducted in what is now recognized as a prolonged rescission, but details seem to mean very little to you.

As an aside, the restaurant I worked for in 2010 made(profit) over $400,000 for the year, split between two owners. They also own several other locations and I'm sure they had similar results from them which would bring them much more than the $200,000 each that they profited from the one store I worked at. If you're going to supply reference, you need to understand what your provided corroboration is actually saying and in what context.

Is this about average restaurant profits across US, or the profits of a few restaurants you worked for? And, why do you make snark remarks all the time, i.e. "but details seem to mean very little to you. ". I care a lot about details. We are still in a recession. Shouldn't this play into what the average profit of a restaurant is? Should we look at the numbers from the 1980's when the economy was rocking solid?

Give us the actual names of the places you have worked. I know intimately the folks at Brinker (Chilis, On the Border, Maggianos) and Lettuce Entertain You, Chicago, plus my parents owned a seafood restaurant and my uncles owned an Italian deli/pizza house.

We are not in the 90's, so that point of reference is of no consequence for people who want to start a restaurant today. Those people need to know that the average profit margin for a restaurant is now between 3-5% depending on the type of restaurant they build.

Richard, I have been wanting to resipond to your post but I haven't because I am filled with different levels of rage. I am not sure that I can respond adequately now. Nothing pisses me off more than listening to some jackass attempt to strip someone of their dignity for their own sick and twisted BS.

The system on whole is completely unbalanced and unsupportable, it boggles my mind that people can still look at America and say the working poor/middle class have too much and the wealthy have too little so they want to "broaden the base and lower the rate" but people of all income levels vote for these ideals, I hope and pray each day that we will change that....

A good video, I've been having a chat with sealon1 trying to explain how government allows corporations to exist by protecting their owners from the responsibly of true owners ship, like how every shareholder would lose their home before a single retiree lost a dollar if government didn't protect them, but I don't think he gets it.

The only thing is people as smart as these guys should be able to see that the corporations have their own political party, the GOP, and if 85% would just vote them out we would have a fighting chance but too few are making the clear connection I hope more do before it's too late...

I blame it on math, people just don't like it, I mean we have this guy who made 20 million in a year when he didn't work on anything but trying to get elected, that's equal to 10,000/hr if you're lucky enough to get 40 hours a week. Then this guy says that people earning $8/hr think of themselves as "victims" maybe that's because they are, victims of job outsourcers like Romney and union busters like Scott, but our greed and ego drive us to say one day I'll be pulling down the big bucks instead of saying WTF!!

yeah it is a odd factoid not sure it was good to include it...47% pay no income tax (according to Romney) if you take the bottom 50% of income earners includes the 47% plus a few more, the 47% is 94% of the bottom 50%, yeah confusing and I shouldn't have included it, just wanting to be fair to the right sort of....

First, you must find out how good of a programmer you are, and then you must use your nights to patch up where you must. How many languages do you know? Are you good with databases? Are the languages you use being sought after?

Once you get up to snuff, create a few demos.

Now, you can look for jobs on the Internet. There are many. That's what I do and I earn up to 35$ an hour. If you use a particular language or framework, hit those forums. There are often jobs offers there. Usually, you start with small projects. Perhaps 1 day of work, or a few days. Then, eventually, you'll fall on someone who likes your work and who decides to hire you full time.

The great thing is you can start slow. If you only work 35 hours a week as a cook, then you'll have plenty of time at night. You work from home and pick the jobs you like and feel comfortable with. The trick is to avoid projects where you need to learn too much, because then you won't be fast enough. Focus on things you already know. Perhaps you're really good with Python, or Jquery, or Mootools, whatever... Then always learn a few things here and there. The world of programming changes rapidly, you should always spend some time learning, but just be careful it's not too much.

You already have created your own CMS, and that's an awesome demo. There are people looking for guys like you out there. You just got to find them. Don't give up.

Of course, you really need to love programming, but from the fact that you already created some of your own projects, I assume you do.

I am doing all of those things already, I didn't need a motivational speaker to did it either. The problem is that when I leave the restaurant biz, I will be replaced. Very few people like code and development well enough to seek the path I chose, let alone have the capacity for self educating. Not to mention the options for self employment are few and shrinking. Big picture homie. I am not the average bear.

If you love coding and have the capacity to learn, then why are you afraid to leave the field of cooking behind? Anyhow, you don't need to leave it behind now. You can slowly morph towards coding full time.

The only negative aspect is that you must be well positioned by the time you reach the age of roughly 45. Most coders stop coding work at that time and become project managers. The problem is coding takes a lot of brain power, and 25 year old kids coming out of college usually code much faster than 45 year olds and they know all the new languages, etc... If you have a lot of experience, then you usually just start organizing bigger programs and don't have to code so much. It becomes more about architectural decisions.

In the last 15 years, I have seen more and more self employment opportunities in the field of programming, not less. More and more, companies outsource to programmers working from home. With software like Github it makes it easy to work in teams. On my last project, we were 8 programmers from various parts of the world working on one site.

You assume I'm still cooking because I like it and not because I lack clients? I've already made some phone calls this morning, soliciting my services. If you speak from youthful wisdom, I can forgive your Ass-umtion. If you're grown and still speaking as if I lack motivation, fuck off.

Well, the problem that I notice is that you would have to acquire 2-3 new clients every week at the rates that you've talked about to make a decent living. IMHO you might want to think about starting out by selling your time instead of selling a product because the risk factor is so much lower.

A handful of companies that operate multiple names(LLCs) would get me there just fine. Locking in one of these could yield 5-20 accounts with one signature. I don't have time to spare on tiny projects, if I did I would be working a second job.

You still have some fundamental strategic problems. Mainly that you're trying to wear too many hats at once. If you have such limited time then you need to leverage your time effectively. If you're in the business of providing managed web site hosting and design, then what is the benefit of doing it using your own CMS? You're going to have to take time away from business development to deal with the engineering. What is the benefit of using your custom CMS instead of something that's maintained by other people? Why use your CMS instead of Wordpress or Octopress? Your custom, minimal CMS actually becomes a liability because you personally would have to extend it to add video embedding or audio embedding or a Twitter feed or maps or any of the other things that clients want. It you just use Wordpress then you can install plugins instantly and then move on to acquiring the next client. Your current strategy virtually assures that you're going to get bogged down for months when you do land that first big client with multiple web sites.

It already has video embedding, drag and drop even. Maybe you didn't read the list of features. Twitter supplies the HTML embed snipped, you just copy and paste, WordPress is dependent on SQL which is a security nightmare. The CMS is not only for the client, it's to make my job that much easier. I can build an entire website in and hour or two with my platform. So 5-8 websites in a day.

But what is the benefit to using your custom CMS instead of outsourcing the maintenance of the core CMS to a huge team of open-source developers?

I'm pointing this out because one of the best and also most difficult decisions that I ever made in my career was to abandon my own web framework that I spent five years working on, and switch to Rails. I'm not advocating that you use Rails, I'm just saying that when I did that, it freed up all of that time because I effectively outsourced all of that work to people who are happy to do it for free. And thousands of world-class coders all over the world are always going to end up building a better product than just one guy alone can.

(And FYI, Octopress does not use SQL, or any DB. And it beats your data model because its data model is versioned and yours is not.)

He's a smart guy overall. It's within his reach. One of the key ways that people learn about things like SCMs and TDD and automated deployment and all of those modern techniques is by doing networking and establishing connections with other people in the field who can point out what things are worth looking at. I'm trying to help him out by doing that.

This is not the first day of this. And he's being a lot more polite to me than he originally was. He wants to wear every hat in the business, which means that he's going to need to get a lot better at business networking because one of those hats is CEO. So that means strategy, business development, and business networking. All three of which seem to be major weaknesses. If he's determined to stay weak at one of the most critical jobs that affects the outcome of his business then it's no surprise that he's struggling.

And, he's doing all this after cooking all day and tucking Sarah and Jimmy in bed. I'm not sure what material you gave him to look at, but I think he'll need to use this method if he wants to code very efficiently with his tight schedule. With this system, anyone can become a fabulous advanced coder in 21 days!

Haha that was hilarious. But I refuse to knock on Richard's coding skills because I've seen his CMS myself and it's totally decent. Extremely minimalist and I can't imagine selling it to a client, but it's totally decent for a PHP CMS learning project with no DB.

He has kind of a superstition about databases and so I've tried to point out noSQL DBs like MongoDB and Redis. And I've provided access to our Peepcode account so that he can learn. Hopefully he can get past the pride thing and get something out of all of this.

Wow I just saw this part. A site an hour, while also doing all of the sales, while also building and maintaining the core technology, while also dealing with all of the bookkeeping. All one guy. I'm baffled by the accusation that you and I are the assholes for pointing out the problems with this plan. And this is all at night after working a day job.

All because he won't accept the idea that an employer can serve many functions that could be useful to him, like lining up work, assuming most of the risk, handling administration and bookkeeping, providing health insurance, etc. And because he thinks that somehow taking a job in web development would mean the end of his dream of owning a technology company, whereas working a job in a kitchen doesn't.

This entire page ended up turning into a counterexample, instead of an example of a person with the system stacked against them. An example of a person who has options that they refuse to take advantage of, who wants to complain that the system is stacked against him instead of taking any number of possible obvious steps toward making more money and being treated with more respect.

Indeed. The problem with a product in the programming industry is that it gets old very fast. You need to update it constantly. If you're one guy with one program and you're also doing all the dealings with clients it quickly becomes a nightmare. If you're a small firm and you have a few programmers always coding for the product and a secretary for the clients, ad design and placement, etc.., then it's another story.

I assumed you were still a cook because of this posting. I didn't assume as to why. I was just trying to help. There's no need for you to call me names and tell me to fuck off. One thing I will say is that you're going to have to change your attitude if you want better jobs.

lol, if indeed people said I wasn't trying when I called to offer my services, I probably would tell them to fuck off as well. Most people though, when I call, discuss their current situation with regard to their website. The two responses most common are...

We already have a great designer, but thank you.

We really need to but right now we don't have it in our budget to upgrade.

You're trying to compete on two levels simultaneously: you're trying to compete with other businesses that are probably a lot longer established, and you're trying to compete as a relatively new web developer. IMHO you could increase your chances of success by focusing on the web development and letting other people handle business development.

I have been calling around to other development companies for such a partnership. The problem is they ask for an hourly rate which I am not at all interested in. I'm done with making money for other people.

Getting paid hourly is the way to go in the world of programming. Getting paid per project always fails because making estimates can be so difficult especially if you are working on something you don't have much experience with.

I don't do estimates. It's $500 annually, period. Maybe you didn't read the entire comment so I'll reiterate. I'm done making money for other people. As in, my skills will no longer be exploited to make some lazy douche bag wealthy. I work, I keep the profits, all of them. It's pretty simple really.

I have to chip in here and say that I agree with Jack yet again, and this is one of those tidbits of wisdom that two guys with experience are trying to give you for free. You will always screw yourself over by giving a flat rate. You should build your profit into your hourly rate and then you're guaranteed to make money.

500$ anually is an estimate because you don't know exactly how much time you will spend on one of those contracts. At 30$ an hour, which is a cheap price, that's 16 hours per client per year! I'm willing to bet it will take longer than that. You need to factor in phone calls, meetings with them, etc... And, you also need to factor in looking for clients! You'll need a lot if you only spend 16 hours per client per year. Believe me, you're in for a world of hurt. The chances of being exploited will fall drastically if you work for one person who pays you a good salary per hour.

How many times a year do you think a restaurant changes their menu, needs to add an email for management? I can see you don't speak from experience. You may write code or you may not. I have 20 years in the restaurant industry from dishwasher to manager, fast food to four star, I have a very good understanding of their needs and practices. This is why I chose that industry as my target.

I made a few websites for restaurants and they wanted to change stuff all the time. Some had special events, sometimes they wanted to change staff photos, a phone number, whatever. I'm just saying you're not going to be making anywhere near what you could be making from programming alone if you try to do everything at once. I've been programming for 25 years, and I've tried to do what you are doing before. Believe me, it's a big waste of time.

If you want to make money without a zillion hassles from a zillion customers, then get paid hourly and work for one business. Coders code, they don't manage, do design, handle clients meetings, etc... Stick to one thing.

Your desperation in trying to convince me to forego self employment is interesting, to say the least. if you like making money for others, great, good, fantastic. That isn't my goal and your goals have no impact on mine.

You posted this page all about your problems, and two different guys who have been successful professionally in the industry that you aspire to join have been trying to help you to understand how you could be more successful. We're not trying to convince you to forgo self-employment, we're trying to help by pointing out that maybe this isn't the right time in your web career to start your own shop. Yet.

One thing that I've noticed about you is that you're consistently hostile to people who genuinely try to help you. Hopefully you and I are past that. But you might want to give it some thought. You seem to be holding yourself back in many ways.

I didn't make any assumptions about you Richard, you made some about me.

To tell you the truth, you won't make much money if you try to get website contracts. The problem is, people looking for one programmer to do a website have small sites. You'll constantly need to get clients for this to work which means a lot of phoning around and dealing with clients. Not much fun for a coder. I used to do that, but I make a lot more money now, and it's so much easier. What you need to get is a job working for a company that has a big site, like WIRED or something of the sort. This will give you a longer term job. I worked for 2 years on the same site and that contract ended just a few months ago. That means that for two years I was getting 35$ an hour (my usually wage) to just code for the same site. We were 8 programmers. A big advantage of having many programmers is that we all had different focuses. If you work on a small site alone then you need to deal with all kinds of languages, with the client, with the design, etc... In the end you lose. If you can focus on only doing server side coding, or client side coding, or database structures, etc... then you get much more done and you get go in much more depth. Otherwise, you're always playing catch up. Whether a programmer likes it or not, it's a huge waste of time to switch languages back and forth. 2 hours of javascript, then an hour of HTML, then an hour of PHP, etc... It never ends. If you focus on one language, then you get really good at it and you never have to look up stuff. You just rock.

I guess the question is do you want to code, or do you want to play the role of a manager trying to get contracts and dealing with clients? Those are two very different things. It seems to me that you're a great coder and that you love it so I would say get a job where you just code.

I agree 100% with everything that you just said. I've also made a living doing small assembly-line sites for clients, and it's very difficult to make it work out when you're just one guy, because you have to do all of the business development and all of the work. And if you're a less-experienced developer, then each project takes you a lot longer. As you become more experienced, you learn to leverage tools better and you can crank out sites more quickly. But that's a skill that people typically learn while working at a shop that lines them up with work so that they can focus on the development. Trying to wear both the entrepreneur hat and the web developer hat at the same time is very difficult. I would say nearly impossible if you're trying to pay the rent working at a restaurant and also taking care of kids, because there just aren't enough hours in the day. And because if you fall just a little bit short of your business development goals then the whole thing doesn't work. But there are huge backlogs of work at nearly every technology company that you could easily tap into if you can demonstrate aptitude with the right skills.

Agreed. Another thing with doing small sites is that you end up having clients call you for changes here and there. I don't like that very much. The only time I do one man sites now is for friends or friends of friends who have a small project that I know I can put up fast. I usually use a CMS like WolfCMS for that. My real work is always for long term projects where I only need to code. Dream jobs are those that last many months and which you can concentrate on only a few languages.

Man, you need to be in the zone to program! You can't do it when in the middle of a rough algorithm some 4 month old client calls you to make urgent changes, and then you have to remember to call this new guy etc... It's also a waste of time to go from designing to coding. I did do both at one time, but I'm a much better coder than designer and those are two very different jobs. Now I just code.

Yes, definitely. I'm exactly like you in every way except that my CMS of choice happens to be Octopress/Jekyll. Richard is trying to do software development when he doesn't need to do software development I order to empower the web design business model that he's talking about. Successful developers don't reinvent the wheel just for kicks, they only write new code when it's necessary. And successful web designers don't have time to write code at all.

Reinventing the wheel is probably the biggest problem in software design. I hope Richard's project is successful, but room for new CMS systems is not that big, and it's hard to imagine how one man will compete with open-source systems which have teams of coders adding lines everyday. However, I think it's great that he wrote his own CMS for learning purposes.

I don't want to disparage the CMS project that he did. I've looked at it and it's really nice. It's clean and minimal. It reminds me of https://github.com/cloudhead/toto

But I worry that he's a little too eager to take one of his first learning projects and try to productize it, when that doesn't make a lot of sense strategically. Friends don't let friends drive drunk, and I'm pointing these things out for the same reason. I'm not trying to be a dick and belittle his CMS. I myself spent years working on a web framework that I decided to completely abandon, even converting existing sites to Rails. Best decision I ever made, because I can accomplish far more by leveraging Rails and the work of thousands of other people, than I can by doing it all myself. Atlas shrugged, and it was the best career move that he ever made.

At the moment. But I'm more of a fan of Ruby itself than any specific framework because it's the highest-level language around at the moment. I use Sinatra a lot too. It's about using the right tool for the job. I'm a big fan of Node.js too. I'm a big fan of dynamic languages in general but I also do a lot of iOS and Android and Windows development with Objective C and Java and C#. I'm a polyglot. If you do this stuff long enough you end up needing all kinds of different tools for all kinds of different solutions.

IMHO, Node.js is the way of the future because web sockets and the realtime web is the future. And so that means CoffeeScript.

I understand what you are selling. In my opinion, it's not worth it. 500$ is nothing for an entire year. I'm only trying to help. After 15 years in the field of website programming the best jobs I ever had were working full time for long term sites doing only programming. However, this is only advice I am sharing with you. If your model works for you, then that's great.

One thing to remember, more and more CMS's are coming out and a lot are free and very capable. There are also sites now that let you setup the site by yourself, edit the content, set up a shopping cart, a forum, a blog, manage emails, etc... and it's only going to get a lot easier very soon. In my honest opinion, the road you are taking is a dead end street.

One thing that will always be required is custom programming solutions, and those jobs are usually given out by bigger companies. The smaller ones have less money and usually use off the shelf products as much as possible. Only the bigger companies with a lot of money can afford the time it takes programmers to build custom powerful solutions.

Sites like these will be hard for you to compete with, and there are more and more popping up: http://www.weebly.com/

Yeah, I've done some work for WordPress victims. Thats why I know the managed model will work.

The idea isn't to get as much as I can, I'm not a bank. I have a goal of 100 clients, at which point I will stop accepting new clients. I just want to provide for my family, I've no use for yachts and such.

Did you even look at Weebly? Jack had an extremely good point about the long-term viability of the business model of selling your expertise as a custom software developer, versus the risk of obsolescence from tying yourself closely to one product.

A decade ago, my business model was selling web mail software. I made one of the first commercially-available web mail web apps, back when HotMail was a fairly new concept. I sold two editions of my product, one for $250 and one for $400. It sold pretty well and I made a lot of money and hired people and had a pretty nice dot-com boom. I even kept making money after the dot-com bust. But eventually SquirrelMail came along and it did everything that my product did for free. Why would you pay $250 for a web mail app when you can get it for free? So that revenue stream dried up and I had to pivot. Which was not a problem because the whole time that I was selling my product, I was also doing custom software development.

In your case, the free competition already exists. You don't get to enjoy a virtual monopoly from being the first guy to bring a product to market. You're already competing with people freely giving away what you're trying to sell. Not just the CMS but also the managed web services and the email and all of that. I set up email this morning for a new hobby blog domain (the site about teaching tech literacy to kids that I was talking about) using Google Apps. It was free and it took 20 minutes including the domain registration. It came with MailChimp for free.

I suppose you might find 100 people who don't know that you can host a site for free using lots of different services, or that you can get email for free very easily. But I really wouldn't bet on that business model. Okaloosa is not a very populous place, I've been there. And the web is not a new thing. If you're determined to only go after local clients then you don't have a lot of potential targets, and selling will be increasingly an uphill battle as creating new web sites becomes more and more as simple as setting up a free GMail account. The population is getting younger and younger, and increasingly the targets of your sales pitches will be kids who grew up on the Internet creating Tumblr blogs, who won't need your product to make a web site.

One of the responsibilities that you're taking on by refusing to work for somebody else is strategy. If you were working contracts for a company or if you were an employee, then other people would be dealing with the strategy and the business development. But since you refuse to work for somebody else unless it's in a low-pay, low-skill capacity as a kitchen worker, you're taking on that responsibility for yourself.

So as the chief strategist ("CEO") of your company, you have to think about these things. Your business model is your responsibility, adapting your business model to new developments is your responsibility, and forecasting future market conditions is your responsibility. You can't just dismiss what Jack and I are pointing out as "defeatist" because you're the CEO now. You're the one who has to think about risk management, positioning, and the overall business model. And the fact that it will become increasingly easy in the coming years for your potential customers to use a free service to run a web site is very relevant to your business model. As a CEO, you're going to need to be more willing to pivot your business model than you are now.

I know that you intended this whole page to stand as an example of a victim of the system. But instead you've made it kind of clear that you're a victim of your own decisions. You have the skills to land a job that pays two or three times what you're earning in the kitchen but you refuse to work for a technology company or work on technology contracts. You would apparently rather work in a kitchen and make $1,300/mo and complain about it, than take a job as a PHP developer. You have had tech companies in your area ask you about your rates. You could easily quote any rate over $14/hr and instantly improve your life, but you won't do it because your pride won't allow it. But your pride will allow you to crank out grilled chicken in seven minutes or less for $14/hr. You opened up to strangers on the Internet more than you probably ever would to anybody in person, and you ended up hearing from two different people who have done exactly what you're talking about doing. Both offered more hard-earned wisdom than they ever probably would have in person, but yet you choose to ignore all of it.

The guy who I hired out of Miami Dade Community College started several ventures while working for me, and he still runs them now that he's making $85/hr working on contracts for Pivotal Labs. He started a venture that sells colored tote bags for $16 each that cost $3 each in PPC advertising to sell. He does about 20 conversions a day. Do the math. He started another venture while he was working for me that does social media analytics, and I have no idea how much revenue that one generates but it's substantial. In addition to making $85/hr, working 35 hours per week. Do the math here, this guy is making a quarter of a million dollars per year, three years after dropping out of community college.

You're a victim, that's true. But not of the system. The system is prepared to reward you for the highly marketable skills that you've learned. If you were willing to make a commitment to continue learning, then you could earn a lot of money, work fewer hours, and in a couple of years you could establish multiple different ventures at night that would all pay dividends over the long tail, while you earn steady money in a risk-free way during the day. It wouldn't be hard to get health insurance for your family out of the deal also.

I'm not responding to your materiel. It's obvious that you can't wrap your head around large concepts. This is one of those instances where you need to see the forest but refuse to let go of the tree. I don't think Occupy is a good fit for you.

The large concepts ("strategy") are exactly what I'm trying to point out here. You've got access to a world of opportunity through the same Internet connection that you're using to bitch about your economic woes. You're clinging to an uphill business model instead of thinking about strategic changes. You're working in a kitchen when you could be making two or three times more working in an air-conditioned office. You're intentionally limiting yourself when you could easily be making a lot more money without doing manual labor. There is a huge forest out there but you're focused on that one Okaloosa tree.

But maybe you're right. It seems that Occupy is more of a fit for a person with a victim mentality. You want sympathy for what a terrible position that you're in more than you want to overcome the obstacles that are keeping you in that position. That kind of mentality seems to be a perfect fit for Occupy.

Getting 100 regular clients with small sites will not be easy. Good luck. My opinion is that you could make much more money programming for one company and it would be a lot less hassle. However, if you enjoy being on the phone constantly and dealing with 100 different clients each wanting changes here and there all the time, then have fun.